The morning felt offensively bright even before Mo opened his eyes, so he kept them closed, bracing himself for what he’d find when he eventually opened them. The room was arctic, but he was clammy. Sweating out the night before no doubt—although no amount of sweat could save his liver from what he’d evidently done to the poor bastard. He took a slow breath in—one, two, three, four—and let it out—four, three, two, one.
The place smelled like it could do with a window open, the air laced with stale booze, an unfamiliar perfume (which was doing a poor job of masking another curious smell) and sex. His nakedness under the sheet was confirmation of the latter. No surprise there.
The chatter and traffic noise drifting in from outside announced he wasn’t in his own bedroom. London life buzzed by in place of the blissful silence he normally woke to and springs dug into his back, letting him know in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t his state-of-the-art mattress he was dying on.
He rolled away from the light and pressed his face into the pillow. His belly felt hollowed out—cavernous, like he hadn’t eaten in a week—but the foul taste of garlic and cheese carpeting his mouth meant he must’ve had something; breath this horrific didn’t make itself. He gingerly inspected his aching teeth with his tongue. He’d been grinding them in his sleep again. Unresolved stress, the dentist had told him. No shit.
Mo could hear even breathing to his left. Whoever it was wasn’t snoring, but close to it. Keeping one eye defiantly shut, he gingerly opened the other, squinting against the watery light flooding the room. On the bedside table was a bright pink, diamante-encrusted AirPod case and a tub of something fruity from The Body Shop. Neither bode well for the vintage of the woman behind him. He was forty-one, but the ages of the women he slept with hadn’t changed much in the last fifteen years. They probably wouldn’t even think about it if he wasn’t, you know, who he was.
A tiny dress lay on the floor next to the bed, crumpled, no doubt, in his haste to remove it. He prised his leaden head from the pillow and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw his own clothes piled up against the wall near the door. This was a signature move of his, honed through repetition. It made getting out unseen and unheard much easier. He rolled out of bed and gently replaced the covers.
He stole a brief glance at the woman. Rachel, possibly. Beautiful. Honey blonde hair and strong features. Legs longer than should be legal. And too young for him. Of course. Maybe mid-twenties. Drenched in fake tan, which answered the question about the curious smell. Snippets of the evening started emerging through the fog and he recalled her thick Geordie accent and throaty laugh. She’d been fun, but he had to get out of there before she woke up. A clean exit, just in case she had any ideas about calling the paparazzi. He was supposed to be resurrecting his career, forging a new image, not confirming he was still the same model-shagging dirtbag he’d always been. Old habits. Old dog.
Mo tiptoed across the room, scooped up his clothes and went out into the silent lounge room. He pulled on his underwear and crouched, rummaging in the pockets of his jeans to find his phone. He shot a rapid-fire text message to his driver, then finished dressing: jeans, shirt, old bomber jacket.
He took one last look around the apartment, scanning for anything he might’ve left behind. The place was a mess. He padded around collecting discarded glasses and sat them next to the sink, righted the couch cushions, which had ended up strewn all over the place, and restacked the magazines they’d swept off the coffee table.
His guilt at sneaking away somewhat appeased, he pulled on his shoes and slipped out of the apartment to wait for his ride.
The door to the building had barely closed behind him when he heard someone shouting his name.
‘Mo! Over this way, mate!’
Mo looked up to see a lone photographer hiding behind a long lens on the other side of the road. He turned and tugged urgently on the door, but it’d locked behind him. Of course it fucking had. He found his sunglasses in his pocket and shoved them on as he turned back to the busy high street, already teeming with people who looked far less close to death-by-hangover than he was. Cafés full of morning people. Shops preparing to open. A busload of commuters disembarking at a stop halfway up the block. There was nowhere to go and it seemed even if there were, it was too late to hide anyway. He’d already been spotted by a huddle of women out the front of the closest café. One of them was pointing at him and another had her phone raised in his direction. Filming, no doubt. More people stopped, appraising him like he was some kind of inanimate object in a museum, not an actual sentient being. More phones were coming out of pockets. He attempted a smile but his face betrayed him, and that dipshit on the other side of the street was still snapping away like his life depended on it.
Where the fuck was his driver? She’d said five minutes. It had to have been that long already. Mo looked left and right, up and down the street, searching for the car. An older woman in a lavender puffer coat asked for a selfie with him and took it before he’d even had a chance to consent. Others snapped photos on their phones from a distance. This was the side of it he hated. The constant exposure. The endless intrusion.
Finally, the shiny black bonnet of the car came into view and Mo broke into a purposeful stride to intercept it. The photographer darted across the street, playing chicken with a bus so as not to lose his target, his scrawny legs annoyingly nimble in flappy cargo pants. Mo felt him scuffle up, crab-walking alongside him, snapping away at his profile.
Mo clenched his teeth. ‘That’s enough, mate.’
‘C’mon, Mo,’ wheedled the photographer. ‘Gimme a good shot. All publicity is good publicity, right?’
This was what they did best. They goaded. They provoked. They poked the bear until it roared for the camera. Mo’s inhale flared his nostrils, stoking the flames building in his chest. He swallowed hard against the urge to snuff the little prick out. He couldn’t let this clown get to him. A mistake here was exactly the sort of thing that could derail his career. Again.
The car was getting closer and Mo waved frantically at the driver to pull over. The front wheel mounted the kerb and he lengthened his stride to reach the door handle, the photographer still so close Mo could smell the instant coffee on his breath. Mo pulled the door open and as he barrelled into the passenger seat, the photographer slid behind the door, preventing him from slamming it closed. The lens was right in Mo’s face now, the shutter clicking frenetically, capturing every iteration of his rising anger.
‘Back off, mate.’ Mo’s voice was low and measured.
‘Ease up, Mo. You old has-beens can’t afford to be picky. You have to take what you can get these days, no?’
Mo grabbed the lens and jerked it down, pressing the camera into the photographer’s chest, pinning his back to the car door, making it swing open behind him. ‘I said, backoff,’ he snarled, his hand still wrapped firmly around the lens.
‘C’mon now, Mo,’ weaselled the photographer, a maddening grin spreading across his face. ‘You know you fucking love it.’
Mo let go of the camera and as he did, the photographer flung himself backward into the gutter in a mess of arms and legs—an Oscar-worthy performance lapped up by the onlooking crowd, their phones held aloft to capture the whole exchange.
‘Thanks, man,’ said the photographer as he scrabbled to sit, that infuriating smile smeared across his face again. ‘You just paid for my next holiday.’
***
That evening, Mo stood in the shower and let the needles of steaming water punish his back. He’d been locked in a self-imposed cell of hungover hell all day. He hadn’t spent even a second of it working on the new album, either. Thecomebackalbum. Ugh. His brain was too fried to think straight, let alone in the curly lines needed to write music. His greatest achievement in the last twelve hours had been a restless sleep on the couch whileStar Warswent on without him on the 85-inch flat screen. He’d woken feeling messy, inside and out, and had spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the enormous house like a vagrant in his own home.
He turned around and let the water pummel his face, his inked hands pushing his hair back and gathering it at the nape of his neck. Time for a cut. Maybe he’d just shave it all off again. Men could do shit like that and nobody cared. He knew for sure that if a woman in the spotlight did it, the trash mags would be running cooked-up cover stories about her mental breakdown before she’d even unplugged the clippers.
Mo hated those rags. Pages and pages of crap fuelled by photos taken by odious little chancers who saw celebrities as walking pay cheques. Just like that snake, today. The little shit wasn’t wrong, though—some celebrities actuallydidlove the attention. Mo, on the other hand, was a notoriously closed book. An enigma, apparently. He smirked mirthlessly. There was no mystery here, just a lucky imposter who’d been in the right place at the right time, who was now hurtling towards middle age, trying to revive a career he wasn’t even sure could be resuscitated.
He rested his forehead against the kaleidoscope of hand-made Moroccan tiles. His younger brother, Mav, had nearly choked when he’d seen how much they’d cost, but Mo had felt so gloriously hidden from view when he’d holidayed in Marrakesh after the 2018 tour that he’d happily forked out to bring a little of that feeling home with him. They weren’t having that effect today though, not after last night. He’d fucked up. Epically. First drinking in public, then going home with Rachel, then getting pissed off with the pap in front of all those people. It was all so mortifyingly on-brand for him he could vomit.
